King Ubu

Playing at the Greenhouse Theater Center: 2257 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago

THE STORY:

King Ubu by Alfred Jarry, is a parody of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, with bits of Hamlet and King Lear tossed in the mix. An outrageous farce, King Ubu examines the monstrous personality of Papa Ubu, a gluttonous and brutal creature who murders the royal family of an immaterial Poland in order to ascend to the throne.

Jarry modeled his evil character “Ubu” after one of his teachers in grade school. However, his adolescent joke as a fifteen-year-old was resurrected and evolved over the years into something much greater, as his re-work began to examine the absurdity of bloodlust and the thin line between tragedy and farce.

One hundred twenty years later, the text displays similarities between Jarry’s characters and some of the current political scene’s more famous personalities too difficult to ignore. As Jarry intended, no one is unscathed.